People often find it difficult to explain, or to understand Complex PTSD. I often find myself falling into metaphor or analogy to explain the experience. The reason for using an abstraction is because in Complex PTSD the particulars from one person to another vary – greatly. I have found that trying to paint a detailed picture often results in becoming lost in the need for exactitude. It is impossible to be ‘exact’ for everyone. Enter the analogy.
One question I have seen repeatedly about Complex PTSD is “Why am I having to deal with all this NOW? Why not when it was happening? Why 10/20/30/40 years after the fact?”
In the past, I have often explained that when disfunction is your norm – you don’t see it as dysfunction.
Recently I thought this idea needed to grow. While comparing the environment to a minefield works it doesn’t go far enough. The minefield only addresses the environment, while Complex PTSD is the product of how we adapted to that environment.
Think of all those adaptations we learned or created to keep us safe as a wetsuit. See it in your mind and make it as thick or detailed as you like. Maybe you have one of those ‘survival suits’ for the North Sea, light blinking on the top and bright orange. Perhaps your wet suit is more like the body glove of neoprene we often visualize on Navy Seals and Frogmen.*
No matter how you envision your suit to look it all served one purpose – to preserve your life in a hostile environment. By ‘hostile environment’ any diver will tell you – you don’t need sharks to make the water dangerous. The water itself – everything surrounding you – is quite capable of ending you.
That is the mental state in which many of us grew up. Life itself, our most immediate environment posed an imminent threat to our survival. Perhaps there was a shark – a person(s) with the ability to harm you. Perhaps there was not – but your surroundings were as cold as Arctic waters. And some of us endured both.**
To survive we adapted. Those adaptations became the ‘wetsuit’ we wore to help us survive.
Our ‘wetsuit’ served us while we were in those dangerous places. But as we grow, age, we leave the environment(s) that caused us to make those adaptations.
When we no longer need that wetsuit because we have left the freezing water we don’t abandon it. Primarily because we are unaware of it. Those adaptations are integrated. Our ‘wetsuit’ is an intrinsic part of who we are.
Over time, out of that hostile environment, that wetsuit – our adaptations – no longer serve us. The neoprene becomes hot, binding, restrictive, and could even become more than an impairment, but a danger. ***
It is not a sudden appearance of Complex PTSD. We have carried it with us since we entered that hostile place. The reason for the sudden appearance is not because the wetsuit has changed, but because they have changed their environment and no longer need it.
Now – comes the work of peeling that sucker off. And that’s part of the reason you always have a dive buddy. It is easier to get out of the wetsuit when you have help.
At least, that’s one way to think about it.
*Note: I met one of the original ‘frogmen’, once, years ago. His stories were beyond impressive.
**Note: Just imagine a shark wearing a wooly knit jumper.
***Note: A good friend went to a Halloween party dressed as a ‘diver’ – full suit 5mm – almost cooked himself into heatstroke.
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Currently I’m trying to find a publisher for novel 1. Writing. Writing. Editing. Editing.
And trying to tame the feral kittens that overrun the tiny town I call home.
Mari, I really enjoyed this article, I always find that humour is helpful with CPTSD! I also like using analogies in therapy, my favourite trauma analogy is a game that I used to play as a kid called Buckaroo (I’m not sure if you had it in the States, I’m in the UK). There was a little plastic donkey and you had to hang objects on him but at some point he would buck and they’d all go flying. You never knew if it would be the first or the eighth thing exactly as you say; why now?!
Sounds like a fun game.
IF you choose to play it.
It’s the whole – no choice thing that’s a problem.
Thank you for the encouragement. And – best wishes on your own path.
:::Hugs::: respectfully offered.
Mari
We wrap our blankets around us to self protect, totally unaware that the blanket becomes a part of us throughout our lives. When the symbolic weather in our lives changes, we still wear the blanket. It soaks up the rain and becomes uncomfortable, the hot sun makes the blanket burn us now. We have become the dysfunction. The blanket that once saved us is now a shadow of pain.
I enjoyed the blog, very good analogy, and the comment about Buckaroo I have thought of too, both examples really fit. CPTSD communities are vital because at least we know what it feels like. We need that validation.
Hi Jason – Let me start off with an apology. I am so sorry I have taken this long to respond. I love the idea of a big wet heavy blanket that weighs us down.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
Now, to go fix my email filter.
I like the wetsuit analogy. It makes a lot of sense in many ways. That wetsuit saved us but now years later it needs peeling off. It makes me wonder, will it ever fully come off? If it does, what will the “inside” look like?
Ah, what it looks like when you first take that wetsuit off, speaking from my own experience, I suddenly saw all the places it had bound my limbs, I saw all the impressions it left on me, I saw and felt all the places it rubbed me raw, I even felt a good bit of pain in places I couldn’t see or didn’t know I had.
The good news is that with time, and a good bit of work, those places are healing, a new surface is growing and the places which had been compressed, even to almost nothing, are starting to fill out.
Keep peeling as you can. When you find an injury, help it heal or find someone who can help you.
Rather like applying aloe to the center of your back. Always helps to have a buddy.
Mari I enjoyed your story. It’s true…one doesn’t realize one is wearing a ‘wet suit’ until a part of it comes off and you know something feels different.
This was so very powerful. For so long I’ve tried to get my head around cPTSD and this is perfect. I’ve had 2 occasions to put on a wetsuit and that thing is hard to get into…but infinitely harder to get off.
Thank you for reading. I’ve had to peel myself out of a wetsuit. And, yeah. CPTSD is just as hard. Best wishes for your continued shedding. 🙂 Mari
For twenty eight years I stand at the busiest intersection in my home and each time she passes by I feel the nick of her scalpel on another part of my body. I watch each drop of blood fall to the floor and add to the growing pool without understanding the why. I grow weaker each year from the loss and lose so much of myself I withdraw from everyone and everything until in desperation I walk down to the creek with my pistol and great resolve.
Only my dog’s questioning eyes and my long departed parents voices in my head stop me and I call the V.A. Suicide hotline which saves my life. I understand after two and a half years of intense, painful therapy what a covert narcissist with sociopathic tendencies can do to an empath.
I’m 72 now and still struggling to sew up all those cuts in my “suit”.
My eyes are now wide open but the trust in people may be gone for a now short lifetime. I hope for the best as I am fortunate to have one of the few therapists nationally recognized in this cptsd world.